Bloomingdale mother taken into custody after holding SWAT team at bay

Passaic County Sheriff Department SWAT outside a home on Reeve Avenue Tuesday.

BLOOMINGDALE — A woman has been charged with child cruelty and neglect after holding the police at bay for more than an hour Tuesday morning as negotiators implored her to leave her house with her two young children, the authorities said.

The woman, who was not immediately identified, surrendered to SWAT team officers at about 11:30 a.m., and her children were taken to a safe place and turned over to a relative, the authorities said.

The police responded to the Reeve Avenue house at 10:08 a.m. after a woman told a Pompton Lakes dispatcher who answered her 911 call that something was “horribly wrong” and something “bad was going to happen,” Chief Joseph Borell of the Bloomingdale police said in a release.

She said her two young children, ages 5 and 7, were with her and that there were weapons in the house, he said.

The woman was “agitated” and hung up several times, Borell said. He said “phone contact was reestablished repeatedly,” but did not say whether the dispatcher called the woman. The authorities said the dispatcher kept her on the line, eventually persuading her to surrender to the police.

The Pompton Lakes police identified the dispatcher as Mike Finello on the department’s Facebook page, and said the caller told him she was thinking about “hurting herself.”

The woman, who “appeared to be emotionally disturbed,” also had been talking with members of the county’s hostage negotiation team before surrendering, said a Passaic County Sheriff's Office spokesman, William Maer.

She was charged late Tuesday with two counts of cruelty and neglect to children, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, Borell said. He did not say what kind of weapon she allegedly had in her possession. Bail had not yet been set, he said.

As she walked out of the house, a boy walked with her and a girl watched from the steps. The boy, who appeared to be wearing pajamas, ran back to the steps after a police officer called out to him. The woman put up her hands up and lay on her stomach on the ground as the Passaic County Sheriff's Office SWAT team took her into custody, the authorities said.

In addition to the Bloomingdale police, officers from Butler, Kinnelon, Riverdale and Pompton Lakes responded to the scene, along with the SWAT team and hostage negotiating team from the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office.